maramine blog

Every writer who covers tech gets accused of bias. These accusations most often come from young, passionate readers with strong biases. Oh the irony. I get comments and emails accusing me of being biased several times each week. Typically, I ignore them. Sometimes, I reply.

When I do reply, I try to be frank and also to use little-boy words under the assumption that most of the people who send these emails are young teenagers who read headlines and then draw conclusions. If my responses are too wordy, these kids will likely lose interest after a few sentences.

Below is an example of one such exchange. I publish this for young writers who will inevitably be accused of being biased. Repeatedly, in all likelihood. If this is your chosen line of work, you will often be inclined to defend your writing, but consider your approach. When I see bloggers publicly respond in the comments section below a post with aggression and insults, I shudder. It’s easy to be defensive but it is infinitely more productive—and less embarrassing—to explain to your accusers why they might be wrong.

If you must reply, keep it simple and honest. You will be surprised how often such responses will either silence your accusers, or even help them to understand why their feelings may be misguided. On numerous occasions, my responses have led to great exchanges and readers who become more loyal than ever.

From: [redacted]
Reply-To: [redacted]
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2011 04:49:22 -0400
To: Team <team@bgr.com>
Subject: CONTACT Bye Bye

Name: Chris [redacted]
Email: [redacted]

So,

I’ve been subscribed to your feed for ages. This morning I removed your feed and I felt I needed to tell you why.

You have some good content, but it’s eclipsed by your apple evangelism; which is totally biased and not professional. Please say you’re making money out of it, because it’s sad otherwise.

regards

Chris

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[Response]

It’s easy for people unfamiliar with the way this business works to toss out the oft-misused “bias” accusation, but I assure you that if the bulk of our coverage focused on a company or companies that you favor, you would not believe us to be “biased.”

As it stands, BGR is a business and we have to write about what people want to read about. We cover numerous companies extensively, of course, but Apple is currently the most popular tech company in the world. As such, we cover them more than other companies for obvious reasons: this is what our readers want to read. Apple stories are almost always our most trafficked.

We’ll continue doing what we do, and we’re sorry to see you go. Thanks for being a BGR reader as long as you were, though, and hopefully when the tide turns and the bulk of our coverage focuses on the next big tech company, you’ll come back around to check out the site again.

All the best,

-Zach

I was recently asked by Jack Oughton to answer four questions for Catch 22, an endeavor that takes a unique approach to cultivating journalists. Here are the questions, followed by my responses:

1: What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to aspiring journalists?

Be bold. It doesn’t take much to write a report, but it often takes plenty to have a reader walk away with something he or she didn’t have before.

2: What was the most important thing you did for your career?

The most important thing I did for my career was align myself with the right people. Everything in life is a team sport, and if you don’t find the right team you’ll never be happy. I work with great people and even on terrible days, I’m better off than I would be had I decided to compromise and play for the wrong team.

3: Did you always want to work in the media?

Definitely not… I went to school for business. Then I took a wrong turn somewhere and worked as a marketing exec for about four years. Then I took another wrong turn and found myself working as a business development exec for another three years. It wasn’t until I grew thoroughly tired of constantly addressing the same challenges that I wandered into writing and editing professionally.

4: Lastly, what is good journalism to you?

To me, good journalism answers burning questions people didn’t even know they wanted answers to. Good journalism translates the emotions of a situation so accurately and profoundly that the reader has no choice but to feel them as though he or she was there first hand. Good journalism leaves the reader in a better place than he or she started, or in a worse place, but never in the same place.

Good journalism addresses both sides of a story thoroughly, but it also inherently expresses opinion. People have opinions and people want to read opinions. They want desperately to nod their heads in agreement, and even more desperately to shake their fists in outrage. Journalists are sometimes trained to be impartial messengers who merely regurgitate news. This has its place, but one would be hard pressed to find a respected journalist who didn’t get his or her hands dirty quite often. In fact, in the eyes of many, good journalism might not be journalism at all.

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It should be noted that while my work does often intersect with that of a journalist, and while my objectives do, at times, align with some of those mentioned above, I do not consider myself to be a journalist. More on that here.